Holland Tulip Express

This past weekend was a busy weekend. Friday night my unit had a party at the Vogelweh bowling alley. It coincided perfectly with the trip Emily and I were leaving for at 0130 in the morning. I showed up at the bowling alley around 11pm and bowled abismally for the 2 games I played. Emily had brought her amazing oatmeal carmel bars to entice everyone. There was no resisting. They're amazing. I've been bowling more here in the past 3.5 months than I have in the states it seems. I'm not getting any better, but I think I figured out that I'm using too light of a bowling ball. I did much better when i went from a 9lb ball to an 11lb ball. Who knew.

Anway, Emily and I got on a big German charter bus at 0130. The bus was nearly full and it's a long drive to the netherlands. I was ready for SLEEP. Sleeping on a charter bus in the aisle seat is a very hard thing to do. I'd brought my little pillow and slept hunched over on my backpack as best I could. I kept waking up because my face would start to tickle from the vibration of the bus. about 6 hours in we stopped at a hotel for an amazing breakfast. Breads, meats, cheeses, fruits, eggs, crepes, juice, all the yummy stuff. I think I had too much to each because my stomach was noisy after that. It was all paid for in the trip so i had to take advantage of it.

First, we stopped at a wooden shoe factory. We got to hear the history behind the wooden shoes, see a demonstration of how wooden shoes are made, and then we went on a hunt for wooden shoes of our own. Of course nothing is TOO individual, but Emily and I each found a pair of shoes for our home decor.

Next, we went to the cheese factory! I love cheese. It has a cute story behind it. Our tour guide was American. I was initially baffled because what was an American doing in a Dutch cheese factory. Apparently, she herself was on a USO tour to Holland some time ago as a young Air Force enlisted and came to this cheese factory, and got herself involved in milking the cows with the young son of the cheesemaker. Long story short, they got married a few years later and now she's a Dutch cheesemaker's wife. This factory makes gouda. They make all kinds of gouda. I bought 6 lbs of gouda ;-). Couldn't resist. I have a weakness for cheese.

After the cheese factory, we drove to the town of Volendam on the North Sea. Very much a sea side town. It was grey, wet, and WINDY. Mostly we were there for shopping and eating. We found a restaurant on the boardwalk and got out of the cold to eat. We bought tulips bulbs and each found some delft pottery that is so famous in Holland. It matches my dining room :-).

Finally, we went to the Keukenhof Gardens in Lisse. It's a GIANT flower festival that is held from the 3rd week in March to the 2nd week in May. This year's theme is the 2008 Bejing olympics and inspired the design of the flowers and the art that was displayed. There were many different kinds of flowers but mostly tulips of all different colors. We were lucky that many of them were blooming. It was a bummer though that the weather was so dull. It really showed in the pictures that the lighting wasn't great. The garden covers 32 acres and we only had 2 hours. We hardly got through 1/4 of it. I wish we'd been able to spend more time there but we had to get on the road to get back to Germany. We got home around 0130 the following morning. It was a quick 24 hour trip.

Sunday, I went with Gabe, Julie, and Michele to Belgium. We swung through a furniture store and found that Gabe and I have extremely different tastes in furniture. Then we sat outside at a little cafe and had lunch. The different between Germany and Belgium is that things are OPEN on Sunday. It was a GORGEOUS day out. A day that I had wished for on Saturday. It had a wonderful pfannkuchen (pancake/crepe) with bananas, ice cream, and whipped cream. Then we drove to Tongaren, the oldest city in Belgium, just for Belgian waffles. Totally not your American Belgian walffle. These are a thich dough infused with sugar cubes and cooked on HIGH HIGH heat. They are so sweet and delicious. For a 3 hour drive, it was a good day trip. We got back around 8:30 and that was enough for one day. We were all pooped.

I'm currently at work, offically out of the "Nurse Transition Program", and offically on Orientation for 10CD. We've had a pretty slow night but our computer charting system went down for the last day so we've spent the better part of our shift translating paper orders back to computer orders and making them match. I'm as caught up as I want to be for 0330 in the morning so I took some time to do some catching up. I'm getting munchy, I can see how easy it is for nurses to get fat. I'm always looking to have something to chew on on night shift. Maybe once we switch to day shift I won't have time to think about eating.